The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will evaluate whether emissions from piston-engine aircraft fueled by 100LL contribute to air pollution that endangers public health and welfare.
Under the Clean Air Act, EPA reviews information on air pollutants and sources of air pollution to determine whether they threaten human health or welfare. This is referred to as an “endangerment finding.” EPA officials said in a Jan. 12, 2022, announcement that the plan is to issue a proposed endangerment finding for piston-engine aircraft that run on leaded fuel in 2022 for public review and comment.
“After evaluating comments on the proposal, we plan to issue any final endangerment finding in 2023,” officials add.
“Protecting children’s health and reducing lead exposure are interlocking priorities at the core of EPA’s agenda,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “EPA has been investigating the air quality impact of lead emissions from piston-engine aircraft near airports for years, and now we’re going to apply that information to determine whether this pollution endangers human health and welfare.”
While levels of airborne lead in the United States have declined 99% since 1980, piston-engine aircraft that operate on leaded fuel are the largest remaining source of lead emissions into the air, EPA officials said.
Lead exposure can come from multiple sources, including leaded paint, contaminated soil, industrial emissions from battery recycling or metals processing, and the combustion of fuel or waste containing lead, officials noted.
“Children’s exposure to lead can cause irreversible and life-long health effects,” officials said in a prepared release. “No safe blood lead level in children has been identified. Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. In adults, health impacts from lead exposure can include cardiovascular effects, increased blood pressure and incidence of hypertension, decreased kidney function, and reproductive issues.”
The “endangerment finding” is in response to petitions from Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Center for Environmental Health, Friends of the Earth, Montgomery-Gibbs Environmental Coalition, Oregon Aviation Watch, the County of Santa Clara, and the Town of Middleton, Wisconsin.
More information on the petition response and EPA’s activities on lead emissions from piston-engine aircraft can be found here.
This is a yet another, make it seem like something is being done. EPA has been pacifying by doing something similar every 8-10 years. Until there is some practical alternative, regardless of cost, AVGAS is around for a while but likely at higher cost as supply from huge GA markets as California. FAA has little incentive to find any real practical solution as GA withers away. When we talked with FAA about grants to certify our flex fuel engine replacement that had hundreds of hours of flight time on a Cessna, was told grants were only available to those finding a new fuel or method to modify existing engines to eliminate leaded fuel needs even though they have been trying to do this same thing since 1980 with no progress.
My bet is that as soon as the new approved fuel is fully approved for all engines AVGAS is gone and cost will be north of $8/gal if you can find it. Still cheaper than most other countries.
I don’t foresee any help from the government on this one. Everybody knows only rich people own airplanes, so they can afford high costs of operation. This “rich” guy is heading out to fly his plane. I will be on the lookout for any brain damaged children near the airport.
So what is the EPA telling us?
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported on 5/20/2014. A fleet of 167,000 aircraft emit nearly 500 tons a year of airborne lead. The greatest concertation is at local airports.
Over the weekend the volcano Hung-Tonga blasted into the atmosphere over 400,000 metric tonnes (over 881,000,000 million tons) of sulfur dioxide and the plume as high as 24 miles into the stratosphere of our earth’s atmosphere drifting over Australia and the Western Pacific.
New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), said on Monday (Jan. 17). Sulfur dioxide is potentially harmful to human health, causing irritation of the respiratory tract and worsening conditions such as asthma. The gas can also react with water in the atmosphere and cause acid rains that harm vegetation. This eruption could cause global cooling for approx. 2 years.
Our experts, at the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), released a statement downplaying the effects of this eruption and the hazards associated to humans and the climate.
Endangering! I think the government should be a little more concern with pollution/climate change created by volcanos which is more harmful to humans and small children than little o airplanes.
Monumentally overdue. We’ve known that aerosolized organic lead compounds from burning tetraethyl lead are the major source or brain damage in children, and we’ve known it for 50 years now (since the late 1960s). The evidence is overwhelming. There is no safe level of lead exposure.
With the elimination of larger sources of lead exposure (leaded automobile gasoline, lead paint, lead pipes), general aviation gasoline is now the largest source of lead exposure in the United States. Children near GA airports are being brain-damaged. Pilots are liable for millions of dollars in damages. Airports are liable for millions of dollars in damages. There isn’t any legal excuse for brain-damaging children when you know better and have alternatives.
Most planes run on Jet-A anyway. Of the piston engine planes which run on gasoline, 2/3 run fine on unleaded ethanol-free 94 (or lower!) octane.
For the remaining minority of a minority of planes, an expensive drop-in replacement 100-octane unleaded fuel is available for sale and delayed in deployment primarily by the FAA process (G100), and others (e g Swift) are working and delayed in sales only by irresponsible and corrupt FAA officials creating unnecessary paperwork. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the continued use of leaded gasoline.
The EPA endangerment finding is legally required and was delayed much longer than was legal. The next step after that is to actually implement a ban, which should happen immediately but probably won’t due to lobbying pressure from heartless, child-poisoning, rich but cheap owners of an incredibly tiny number of old piston-engine airplanes which require high-octane fuel.
AVWeb has some good articles on the topic this week.
https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/epa-launches-formal-strategy-to-eliminate-leaded-aviation-fuel/
https://www.avweb.com/insider/sleep-walking-to-100ul/
With the elimination of the last market for leaded auto gasoline (Algeria) last year, the poison-dealer Innospec of the UK, the only company to produce tetraethyl lead legally and the only one to do so outside China, is going to find itself with a business too small to cover its fixed costs, given the massive liabilities and extensive employee protective equipment associated with severe neurotoxins like tetraethyl lead. The oil companies which blend it will want to get the liability off their books too; apparently there were only 10 refineries producing it in 2007, in expensive specialized units which are fouled with lead and require special protective equipment to enter. There are still at least 9 according to EIA records (9 subregions) but most are producing tiny quantities and have strong incentives to close, with the bulk produced in a few locations in Texas. It’s going away, and prolonging sales is merely poisoning children for profit.
Better late than never, though.
What a bunch of garbage. Besides obviously knowing nothing about aviation, it would also appear that you are simply another “independent nvestor, consultant, and (supposed) philanthropist” (aka a very ordinary guy with a trust fund) with a left-wing and anti-fossil fuel agenda. And, needless to say, you have absolutely no useful science or technical background that would entitle you to such strong, technical opinions.
It really gets quite tiresome to listen to your type.
My teenage years were spent working at the local airport as a “line boy”, fueling aircraft was part of my job description. Even though I often times had my coveralls soaked in avgas (80 octane smelled the best), I have managed to survive to age 74 without any brain damage that I know of. Some of my friends have questioned that, since I flew Helicopters for a living.
Gotta throw down the BS flag here…..Splat!
You’re quite right, PeterH
Nathanael, you seem to simply parrot the speal that is coming out of Santa Clara County and the consequent EPA announcement (EPA announcement issued by one person, not a science group).
Using Reid-Hillview Airport as the example, the County’s consultant placed a lead monitor directly downwind from the runup area. It’s kind of like sticking a sensor in your car exhaust and claiming that the reading is the same over the entire county.
The Santa Clara County “study” was performed by a consultant who was paid by the county. He did what his paying client wanted — he produced a “study” that damned the airport. But he also took soil samples in a three mile radius of the airport and they all had lead content, perhaps from the old days of lead in auto fuel? Perhaps occurring naturally? The point is — now that Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, led by a lady named Cindy Chavez, banned the sale of leaded fuel at the airport, the samples would all be the same. The “study: relied heavily on a study from Belgium that showed a correlation between lead levels in children’s blood and lower I.Q. scores. The Belgium study said that the higher lead levels had a direct correlation to lower I.Q. in children, but there is zero substantiation. There is no data offered to support the Santa Clara County’s consultant’s study. It has the appearance of the lapdog consultant seeking flakey data that he has used to support his conclusion and recommendation.
Your post is on the biased side so you must have a prejudiced position on the topic. It really would help if you studied the reports, as I have, listened in to the call ins to the Supervisors’ meetings, and made an informed choice, rather than what I have read here.
It presents a certain dichotomy, why if all these claims have bonafide and widespread results as claimed, why none of the blood sucking attorneys in this world haven’t filed massive law suits and had this before the same judges that decided against tobacco.
I donno –maybe it’s ’cause there aren’t any solid statistics that prove all the hype. Considering that aviation fuel is such a minute consumption over the years with respect to what happened with automobiles, it’s a wonder a genius such as ‘Nate’ could even manage a degree in math, or why we even have any scientists at all, anymore. Everybody should be so brain damaged, it would be impossible.
This endangerment finding reminds me of the show trials of dissidents in the USSR. A panel of judges holds a farcical trial to determine the guilt of a party who never had a chance. The outcome is never in doubt, it is predetermined. So it will be with aviation fuels. As for the government paying for the fallout, don’t bet on it.
I’m certain that the EPA will find an endangerment from lead emissions from aircraft, given the efforts of the current administration.
If that happens, then the gov’t must include incentives to accelerate the adoption of G100UL, and declare it a drop in replacement so there will be no STCs needed.
While the gov;t is handing out money, how about a rebate on the differential cost of G100UL vs 100LL , for at least 1 year , and a grant to airports that may need upgrades to their fueling systems ?